If ever I had an aspiration, perhaps it would be to write for Garden & Gun. The only hitch though, is that all the good stories seem to have been told already. They have covered Wendell Berry, Beasts of the Southern Wild, the importance of the flask, Richmond, bloody marys, Ralph Stanley and his Clinch Mountain, Steel Magnolias, etc etc etc. They have an entire column dedicated to oysters, and another one dedicated to dogs.
Is this not my life, my heartbeat?
If there is anything worse about pining desperately to write for them, it is the fact that their writers are so damn good. Humbling and unravelling good. Hand me some more whiskey, because that is so good and I could never compare.
For a taste, here is perhaps my favorite few lines from the past year:
“It is not posturing, or hyperbole, or marketing. (See: all those song lyrics about California girls and their undeniable cuteness.) Southern women, unlike women from Boston or Des Moines or Albuquerque, are leashed to history. For better or worse, we are forever entangled in and infused by a miasma of mercy and cruelty, order and chaos, cornpone and cornball, a potent mix that leaves us wise, morbid, good-humored, God-fearing, outspoken and immutable. Like the Irish, with better teeth.”
–Redefining the Southern Belle, by Allison Glock
Read up, enjoy, feel a part of the earth beneath your feet.
